The Hard Way
by Alory Shannon
Summary: However strange it seemed at first, it made sense when you thought about it, he supposed. But that still doesn't mean he has to like it. One-shot. Slight crack.


_A/N: …I. I don't even know. Just call me the Queen of Noncanon/CRACK pairings. |_D_;  
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…_TBH, fairly ridiculous though it is, I actually _DO_ think this pairing would be pretty damn hot BUT SADLY, I COULD NOT FIND ANY GOOD FANART FOR IT _:C

…_And just as a warning, this piece does a pretty good job showing off the _odd_ side of my sense of humour…

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However strange it seemed at first, it made sense when you thought about it, he supposed.

He was Hokage now, yet he was unmarried, the last of his line, and Suna was their closest ally. Marrying shinobi from other Villages was a huge security risk, especially someone with ties like hers, but it was also the most straightforward way of declaring a treaty unbreakable; and while mixing blood did not always guarantee that there would be no betrayal between them, it served that purpose better than most other methods and went a long way towards securing the peace.

Especially if there were children.

_Gods,_ he thinks, rubbing the side of his head in an attempt to avert the headache he can already feel forming behind his left eye. _Children._ She's just a child herself compared to him, just a year (or was it two? three?) older than his former students, so how on earth is he supposed to view her as _marriage material?_ She isn't unattractive—that isn't the issue, even though she's not really his type as far as he can remember, though he wasn't really _looking_ because teenage girls in general are not, were not, will never be his type—and she's undeniably strong (perhaps _too_ strong, or maybe just too strong-willed), but even so, something in him balks at the whole idea.

Not that it's really his choice anymore.

If he didn't know any better, he'd think the Nara boy had come up with this simply to get the girl off his own back. In fact, on rethinking this, he _doesn't_ know any better, and it's entirely possible considering how lazy that boy tends to be, and how easily cowed he is by strong women.

Still, regardless of who had come up with the idea originally, the problem (because for a man as comfortably settled in his bachelorism as Hatake Kakashi, it _was_ a problem) was the same. The problem was, negotiations had already begun, and barring some sort of international incident, unexpected treaty-breaking, and/or the end of the world, there was really no backing out of it now without causing an entirely different sort of international incident and weakening their ties with Suna and quite possibly upsetting the new, carefully-balanced peace.

He's not sure if it makes things better or worse that, when she arrives for her part in the negotiations, Sabaku no Temari is obviously no more pleased with the situation than he is.

"Wanting to reinforce the peace treaty between our Villages is all well and good," is almost the first thing out of her mouth when she steps into his office, "but you'd think they could find a better way to do it than to make a young woman marry some old man she barely knows."

She's right, of course, though her statement could've been issued a little more tactfully. She's never been this rude to him specifically—quite the opposite, in fact—but considering the circumstances, it's more than understandable. Kakashi chooses not to be offended, giving her a lazy, companionable smile that she can only see one-quarter of before turning his single visible eye back to the well-worn book in his hand. "You'd think so," he agrees amiably as he turns a page, "but Village elders can be pretty old-fashioned in their way of thinking."

Temari just snorts and drops into the single, straight-backed wooden chair before his desk, crossing her legs at the knee and her arms over her chest and leaning back a bit. "Tradition is rarely practical, or pleasant." Still, by her tone, he can tell that despite the fact that she clearly doesn't like it or agree with it, she knows her duty, and she'll follow her orders regardless of what they entail.

Under the cover of turning another page, he briefly studies the girl sitting across from him, and finds her much the same as he'd remembered. Spiky sandy-blonde hair pulled back in four pigtails, fishnets and black robes with some purple and white here and there; lightly tanned skin, piercing blue-green eyes with a faintly exotic tilt to them framed by long, dark lashes; and a plain, brazen expression that makes it clear that she won't take any kind of shit from anyone. Hokage or not, Kakashi can't help but notice that her figure is womanly—there's a lot of leg and a decent amount of cleavage on display—though that's more a side-note than anything, since his attention stays largely focused on her face…which, regardless of her sharp eyes and stern expression, is still far too young for him to be at all comfortable with this.

He promptly buries his nose in his book and reads, doing his best to convince himself this isn't happening.

She pokes at one of the trinkets on his desk, something Sakura (who'd taken on the role of Hokage's secretary when Tsunade had turned the Village over to him a few months ago) had given him, a gracefully-spinning perpetual-motion sculpture, no doubt specifically designed to distract hard-working Hokages from all their boring paperwork.

Silence reigns.

Growing bored with the little model, Temari's intense blue-green gaze shifts to him, and the Copy Nin can feel the hair prickling on the back of his neck even though she's not really glaring at him, just looking at him steadily. He raises his book another inch, both to block her out of his sight and give her a good look at the title, just in case she hadn't noticed already, and attempts to ignore her.

She won't have it, though, and Kakashi's endeavours to put her off end abruptly when she kicks the desk between them—not hard enough to send it crashing into his gut, not hard enough to make it move at _all_ really—just hard enough to startle him. And ninja, as a rule, are fairly jumpy. Particularly ones who have lived through two wars, spent several years in ANBU, are listed in just about the every edition of the Bingo Book still in print, find the need to worry about the constant threat of assassination even more since they're now considered the Top Ninja in their Village, _and_ who have recently been switched from decaf to something that is very possibly triple espresso by their pink-haired secretary in an attempt to get them to work on time for once.

A little twitch of surprise was only to be expected, he reassures himself as he leaps a good foot into the air. On landing, he finds Temari smirking at him, cool and composed and more than a little amused; she doesn't look like she's moved a muscle, which leaves him no time to gather up a few pieces of his shredded pride (not that there was much of that in the first place, really).

"If you're done trying to pretend I don't exist and you don't have to marry me, you could tell me why _you're_ so against it."

Kakashi looks at her, eye half-lidded in contemplation, then decides there's nothing to be gained by lying to her. "You're still a child," he says simply, and with a great deal more honesty than usual.

He doesn't quite expect the scoffing laughter he receives in return. "I'm no child." She uncrosses and recrosses her long, shapely legs as if to emphasise this point. "I'm a jounin, one of the Kazekage's bodyguards. I haven't been considered a _child_ for years."

Again he just looks at her, visible eyebrow arching a bit. "Technically, no. But compared to me…"

She mimics his expression, raising an eyebrow, though hers is a perfectly clear nonverbal _yeah, what's your point?  
_

"You're at least ten years younger than I am, you know."

"So what? Girls grow up faster in Suna," she says with a fiercely proud, very toothy little grin.

"Girls grow up fast here, too," Kakashi says mildly, but even as he says it, he's seeing Sakura break down and cry, hopeless and weak and beaten and knowing it and _accepting _it, remembering how she hadn't been able to carry out her self-appointed mission not just once, but twice, even after years of training with Tsunade. And then he looks at the face of the girl before him, the hardness and arrogance and slight contempt and _strength_ in her eyes something that Sakura and Ino and all the other Konoha kunoichi anywhere around that age have only ever played at. This is a girl who has killed without batting an eye, who has seen countless people die at the hands of her brother, hands that once upon a time could have easily crushed her as well. She'd constantly faced the very real threat of that sort of death for days, weeks, months at a time, and he knew firsthand that that sort of thing left its mark on a person: a stability, an intense sort of self-possession, a fearlessness. An acceptance of the fact that death was often walking just three steps behind, and might run to match pace with you at any moment, and that she would be ready to first fight it, then embrace it, should that happen.

Girls _do_ grow up faster in Suna, he acknowledges, if only to himself. Or at least _she_ did.

She doesn't reply to his comment—she can tell by his expression that she doesn't need to, that she's won already, so she abruptly switches subjects.

"There's no getting out of this, is there."

It's more a statement than a question really, and Kakashi puts out any last lingering flickers of hope the blonde might've had with a rueful shake of his head.

"You mean other than another secret invasion, a particularly horrific natural disaster, or the end of the world?"

"I thought this _was_ the end of the world."

"It would seem not."

She tilts her head, eyes sliding upward and narrowing consideringly. "…I could probably arrange at least one of those. Do you have a preference?"

Kakashi is a little surprised to find a genuine smile on his face, and more than a little surprised to realise that at some time he'd unconsciously set his book aside in favour of talking with this almost shockingly blunt girl. Although his first impulse is to pick that book right back up and proceed with Plan A, Ignore Unwanted Future Wife In The Hopes That She Will Get Fed Up Long Before The Ceremony And Beg Off Marrying An Old Pervert Who Is Perfectly Content With (And Had Rather Planned On) Being A Bachelor Forever, some part of his brain obviously has less sensible ideas, and somehow that's the part that ends up in charge. Instead he rubs his chin, pretending to think it over, then heaves a dramatic sigh. "I don't think any of them would look particularly good on my record. Especially not so early in my reign as Hokage. They haven't even finished carving my face into the mountain yet."

"Is that what they're doing? I thought someone just felt like defacing that part of the mountain." The hint of a smile about her mouth belies her sardonic tone, and Kakashi has to stifle a snort of laughter.

"And here everyone keeps telling me how much it looks like me," he says mournfully.

"I never said it didn't," Temari shoots back archly, a gleam in her eye, and this time Kakashi doesn't bother to hide his quiet snort of amusement. Quite the strategist, this girl, even in seemingly casual conversation.

Had he been allowed to dwell on it, he _might_ have begun to worry about the sudden so-small-it-was-practically-insignificant and yet still undeniable stirring of vague interest he _might_ have started to feel towards this girl—young woman, rather—but he doesn't get that chance just yet. There will be plenty of predawn hours devoted to bewilderment and soul-searching and self-loathing in the future, but for now he remains blissfully ignorant of that slight shift, or indeed any sort of personal revelations.

"Well, since there's no getting out of it, we might as well accept it and learn to live with each other," Temari says matter-of-factly, a martyr resigned to her fate, and Kakashi is already nodding in (perhaps not _quite_ so) reluctant agreement before he realises she wasn't finished— "…And join forces to make life miserable for everyone who decided this was a good idea in the first place."

While it's not quite what he'd call _cruel,_ Temari's smile is certainly nothing short of predatory now. Not for the first time, Kakashi is glad that his mask hides most of his expression, because if anyone could see the matching smirk on his face at the moment, they'd likely start running and never look back. And that would take all the fun out of everything.

"Agreed," he says with a deceptively cheery twinkle, holding out his hand to shake and seal the deal. Her grip is firm, notably stronger than plenty of men's, but she doesn't try to break his hand, to hang on too long _or_ to cut it short, and her eyes (and hunter's smile) don't waver for a moment. "Now, where should we start?"


End file.
